taking your brand overseas
TRANSCRIPT
Taking your brand overseas
Gavin Llewellyn Senior Associate
Intellectual Property
11th March 2015
Steps to take before you
launch your brand overseas
Many businesses spend time getting the
business side right and forgetting about
the law
• Five stages
– Planning and research
– Development
– Clearance
– Trade mark/design registration
– Launch, monitoring and enforcement
Planning
• Identify what you are exporting
– Goods or services?
– What is your USP?
– Who are your customers?
• Research your target market
– Identify local competition
– Will your USP work?
– Demographic comparison
Development
• How are you going to launch the brand?
– Is there any current brand recognition?
• Consider adapting for the local market
– Will it appeal to foreign buyers?
• How am I going to package the product?– Labelling
– Compliance with local laws
Development
• Who will exploit your brand locally?
– Branch office
• Who will be your employees?
• Consider local employment laws
– Local partners
• Franchising
• Distribution
• Agency
• Licensing
Clearance
• Intellectual property rights
• Assets like any other
• IPR strategy
• Protect your IPRs
• Check freedom to use your IPRs!
Copyright
Design rights
Gimex ‘Transline’ bag Gimex cooler bag
‘Chill Bag’ product
Trade marks/passing
off/unfair competition
Clearance
Clearance
• Trade mark clearance searching
– First past the post
• Designs
• Commercial investigations
– Looking for evidence of use and goodwill
– Looking for ‘prior art’
Protection
• Trade mark registration
• Design registration
Launch, monitoring and
enforcement
• Monitor not just the success of your brand,
but also what your competitors are doing
• Trade mark watching services
• If you have registered trade marks, you
should receive notice of conflicting
applications
• Need to carry out your own monitoring of
product designs
• If you discover a potential infringement of
your IPRs act quickly
• Seek local law advice with a local
presence
• Consider joining local trade associations
which champion IPR protection
